Tom Ferrick, Jr. is an editor, reporter and columnist long active in
print and web journalism in Philadelphia. Until 2013, Ferrick served as
senior editor of Metropolis, a local news and information site based in
Philadelphia that he founded in 2009. Prior to that, Ferrick worked as a
reporter, editor and columnist with the Philadelphia Inquirer
(1998-2008). The Philadelphia native has spent nearly 40 years as a
journalist, focusing mostly on government.

Daniel Menaker is a fiction writer and editor, currently working with
the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton and as a consultant for
Barnes & Noble Bookstores. Daniel was a fiction editor at The New Yorker
for twenty years and had material published in the magazine frequently.
In 1995 he was hired by Random House as Senior Literary Editor and later
became Executive Editor-in-Chief.

Mark Halperin is an editor at large and a senior political analyst for
Time
magazine, and a senior political analyst for MSNBC. Halperin, who has
covered seven presidential elections, received his B.A. from Harvard
University and resides in New York City. He is the co-author (with John
Heilemann) of the bestselling campaign books Game Change and
Double Down: Game Change 2012.

Chris Satullo is vice president for news and civic dialogue at WHYY.
He joined the public media service in 2008 after nearly 20 years at the
Philadelphia Inquirer. At the Inquirer, he served as editorial page
editor and a columnist, among various positions. He founded the paper's
Citizen Voices program of civic dialogues on public issues, and in 2006
co-founded the Penn Project for Civic Engagement at the University of
Pennsylvania. He has won more than 50 awards for columns, editorials,
reporting and civic engagement. Before coming to the Inquirer, he
worked at the Express newspaper in Easton, Pa., where he was assistant
managing editor and wrote a syndicated column. A a graduate of Williams
College and a former Fulbright Fellow, he lives in Montgomery County,
Pa.

April 9, 2013: A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT GRENIER AND STEPHEN RATCLIFFE

Stephen Ratcliffe has published more than twenty books of poetry, including New
York Notes (1983), Distance (1986), [where late the sweet] BIRDS SANG (1989),
spaces in the light said to be where one/ comes from (1992), Present Tense
(1995), Sculpture (1996), SOUND/(system) (2002), and Conversation (2011). In
the late 1990s, he began a series of 'poems-written-in-consecutive-days' which
is still going on, and has thus far resulted in three 474-page books –
Portraits & Repetition (2002), REAL (2007), and CLOUD / RIDGE (2011) – and
three 1,000-page books – HUMAN / NATURE, Remarks on Color / Sound, and
Temporality, all available at Editions Eclipse. Audio recordings of his work,
including a fourteen-hour performance in collaboration with several Bay Area
musicians of HUMAN / NATURE at UC Davis on June 8–9, 2008, and another
fourteen-hour performance of Remarks on Color / Sound on May 16, 2010, at Marin
Headlands Center for the Arts, can be found at his page on PennSound; his
ongoing 'daily poems' can be found online at stephenratcliffe.blogspot.com.
Ratcliffe has also written three books of literary criticism: Campion: On Song
(1981), Listening to Reading (2000), and Reading the Unseen: (Offstage) Hamlet
(2010).

Over the past forty years, poet Robert Grenier has constantly pushed poetry into
new frontiers of practice and utterance. His handwritten poems, produced in the
last decade, cross the upper limit of inscription to be both writing and
drawing. His works include Sentences (1978, Whale Cloth Press), Series (1978,
This Press), Oakland (1980, Tuumba Press), A Day At The Beach (1984, Roof
Books), Phantom Anthems (1986, O Books), and OWL/ON/BOU/GH (1997, Post-Apollo).
A graduate of Harvard College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Grenier has
received two NEA Fellowships for poetry writing and has taught literature and
creative writing at UC Berkeley, Tufts University, Franconia College, New
College of California and Mills College.

Ryan Lizza is a CNN contributor and the Washington Correspondent for
The New Yorker, where he covers the White House and writes the magazine’s
“Letter From Washington” column. Since joining the New Yorker in 2007, he has written profiles of
Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Barack Obama, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel,
Peter Orszag, Darrell Issa, Michele Bachmann, and Paul Ryan.

Jonathan Coleman mused on “the art and responsibility of creative
nonfiction writing” (credit Dick Polman) in this wide-ranging lunch
talk. The author, who holds that his experience as a waiter informs his
writing practice, began with a list of must-have qualities for
nonfiction writing, including patience, “curiosity bordering on
obsession,” and a long attention span. It was clear that such qualities
served Coleman well while tracing the complexities of a remote
intra-familial murder case, unraveling the lies of absentee college
president “Uncle Jay,” and convincing Jerry West that he was “as nutty
as he was.” Coleman’s anecdotes were peppered with practical advice
about the field, perhaps the most interesting of which was his technique
of picturing a couple named Mildred and Harry in Iowa to achieve
relatable storytelling.

Lynn Rosen is a book publishing professional with more than twenty-five
years of experience as an editor, literary agent, book packager, and author. She is the author of
Elements of the Table: A Simple Guide for Hosts and Guests (Clarkson Potter,
2007), a guide to setting the table, dining etiquette, and the history of fine dining. Lynn is also
the co-author of The Baby Owner’s Games and Activities Book (Quirk Books,
2006), and The Baby Owner’s Maintenance Log (Quirk Books, 2004), as well
as several gift books and journals. Lynn has been a freelance writer for the Home & Design section of
The Philadelphia Inquirer covering the domestic beat, and has written on
subjects including how to do laundry properly, learning the dreaded art of sewing, and her Mother’s
Day special: what she learned about housecleaning from her mother. Lynn has also written legal profiles
for Young Lawyer and General Counsel Mid-Atlantic
(American Lawyer Media). Lynn is the Director of Graduate Publishing Programs at Rosemont College
in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. teaches at several major Philadelphia universities. As an editor, Lynn
has worked with publishers of adult trade non-fiction and illustrated gift books including Ballantine
Books, a division of Random House, Peter Pauper Press, an independent publisher of gift books, and
Running Press.

Since the 1960s, Anne Waldman has been an active member of the
“Outrider” experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor,
scholar, and cultural/political activist. In the 1960s, Waldman became part of the East Coast poetry
scene, during which time she also made many connections with earlier generations of poets, including
figures such as Allen Ginsberg, who once called Waldman his "spiritual wife." From 1966-1968, she
served as Assistant Director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's; and, from 1968–1978, she served
as the Project's Director. Waldman has published more than forty books of poetry and her work has
been widely anthologized, featuring work in Breaking the Cool (University of Mississippi Press, 2004),
All Poets Welcome (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2003), Women of the Beat Generation
(Conari Press, Berkeley, CA, 1996), Postmodern American Poetry (W.W. Norton, New York, 1994) and Up
Late (Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, 1988) among others. Her poems have been translated into
French, Italian, German, Turkish, Spanish, and Chinese. She is the recipient of grants from the
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Contemporary Artists Foundation, among others.

David Bianculli is a guest host and TV
critic on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. A
contributor to the show since its inception, he has been a TV critic
since 1975. From 1993 to 2007, Bianculli was a TV critic for the New York Daily News. Bianculli has written three books: Dangerously Funny:
The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (Simon &
Schuster/Touchstone, 2009), Teleliteracy: Taking Television Seriously
(1992), and Dictionary of Teleliteracy
(1996).
An associate professor of TV and film at Rowan University in New Jersey,
Bianculli is also the founder and editor of the online magazine, TVWorthWatching.com

Annette John-Hall is a metro columnist for The Inquirer.
She was previously a features reporter and columnist focusing on music, film television and pop culture. A native
of Berkeley, Calif., she covered professional, college and high school sports at the San Jose
Mercury News, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver and the Oakland
Tribune.

Lisa DePaulo is currently a correspondent for
GQ Magazine. Known at GQ for
her political writing, DePaulo has profiled Karl Rove and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele,
among others. She has also contributed to New York,
Philadelphia Magazine, Talk, George, and the blog The Daily Beast.
An alumna of the University of Pennsylvania, DePaulo now resides in New York City.

Pete Dexter, a Michigan native, is an author and former
columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News and
The Sacramento Bee. As a fiction writer, his works include
1988 National Book Award winner Paris Trout (1988, Random House)
and 1996 Literary Award recipient The Paperboy (1996, Dell Publishing).
He has also written screenplays for Paris Trout, Rush,
Michael, and Mulholland Falls.
He currently resides in the Puget Sound region of Washington.

Steve Lopez was a Philadelphia Inquirer
columnist from 1986 to 1997 and is currently a columnist for the L.A. Times.
His book Land of Giants: Where No Good Deed Goes Unpunished (1995) is a
collection of his best Inquirer columns. He is also the author of the
novels Third and Indiana (1995), The Sunday Macaroni Club (1997),
and In The Clear (2002). His book The Soloist
(2008, G.P. Putnam's Sons) was recently chosen as the book for Philadelphia's community reading
project, One Book, One Philadelphia. Adapted into a motion picture starring Robert Downey Jr.
and Jamie Foxx, The Soloist is based on a series of Lopez's columns
published in the Los Angeles Times in 2005.

Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News,
blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs,
the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily
in that order on his blog, Attytood. He is the senior
writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and its former political
writer. Will's been covering presidential campaigns and conventions all the way back to
Jesse Jackson's historic 1984 bid. Working for the spunky Philly paper that GQ
once called "arguably the best tabloid in America," he's gained national recognition for
his scoops on the mysteries of 9/11, the crash of Flight 93, the war in Iraq and the
beheading of Nick Berg.

Gerald M. Stern, author of
The Scotia Widows: Inside Their Lawsuit Against Big Daddy Coal (Random House, 2008),
was a founding partner of the Washington, D.C. law firm of Rogovin, Stern & Huge. Prior to that he was a
partner with Arnold and Porter for eleven years, where he was the lead counsel for the survivors of the Buffalo
Creek Disaster. He wrote about that experience in The Buffalo Creek Disaster, a
recently reissued book still widely used in law schools. Before joining Arnold and Porter he was a trial attorney
with the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, trying voting discrimination cases in
the South. He wrote about those experiences in two books, Southern Justice and
Outside the Law. He has also served as General Counsel of Occidental Petroleum Corporation
and as Special Counsel to the United States Department of Justice. Presently, he is a legal consultant
and lives in Washington, D.C.

Leo Bretholz has appeared in the documentary film
Survivors Among Us. He is also the co-author of
Leap Into Darkness, which describes how Mr. Bretholz fled to
the United States when Nazism began to dominate his native Austria. The book is to be made
into a movie in cooperation with Senator Entertainment. Mr. Bretholz currently lives in
Pikesville with his wife, and speaks regularly on his experiences in the Holocaust.

Dick Polman is the Maury Povich "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania and writes a Sunday
political column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as a daily political blog, Dick Polman's American Debate. He has been cited by the Columbia Journalism
Review as one of the nation's top political reporters. He has been a frequent guest on C-Span,
MSNBC, CNN, NPR, and the BBC, and lectures frequently in the community about journalism and presidential politics. He was
on the presidential campaign trail in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004, and is currently teaching a Penn course on commentary
writing during the historic 2008 primaries.

the Sylvia W. Kauders Lunch Series

Sylvia W. Kauders (CW'42), a regular attendee of our lunchtime programming, established
this fund to support a series of intimate programs at the Writers House each semester
with writers of nonfiction.

Kauders Visitors

The Kauders Lunch Program series has allowed us to host an astonishing number of visitors, including: